Connecting the Dunera Boys, Family and Friends Worldwide

The story of the Dunera Boys

Hired Military Transport Dunera was a British passenger ship built as a troop transport in the late 1930s. As the storm clouds of war gathered in the late 1930s, thousands of German refugees - either Jewish or politically opposed to the Nazis - fled to Britain for sanctuary. Little did many of them know they would soon be deported to Australia in one of the more notorious incidents in British maritime history, later described by Winston Churchill as "a deplorable mistake".

As a wave of fear over a German invasion gripped the nation at the start of World War II, thousands of foreign nationals were kicked out over fears that they might be enemy spies They were put on the ship HMT Dunera, which had a capacity of 1,600 including the crew. It set sail from Liverpool 70 years ago on 10 July 1940, without the passengers - later known as the Dunera Boys - knowing where they were going.